A little while ago, I had an idea for a cool photography project to visualize Nora’s growth, one that hopefully won’t involve peeing on electronics. My idea is to take a photo of Nora at six months old on one side of our sofa, and then take another picture of her at one year with her slightly to the right of her previous position. Ditto for 18 months and 2 years. Then, I can photoshop them all together to have four versions of Nora sitting together on the sofa! Cool, huh?
I immediately recognized that the difficulty is going to be in camera positioning. With any long-period timelapse, you absolutely must have a strategy (like a fence post) for getting the camera in the same position after an extended period of time has passed. The best idea I could come up with was something like a loop of string around the sofa legs and tripod legs, but I don’t really like that idea.

In preparation for the six-month-old photo, I’ve done some tests to see how feasible this project will be even if I’m unable to perfectly line up the camera every six months. The results aren’t bad at all. I think we’re a go for this project.

This one was done without moving the tripod at all. The lighting and stitches are perfect. Worth viewing large.

This one was done handheld yesterday with a slightly less interested Nora. I just tried to generally frame the couch, sometimes standing a meter away from where I took the previous shot. Its imperfections are pretty obvious, but the overall effect still works well.

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Question…does your wife and presumably mother of your daughter (I’m directing the question to the main father , the one in charge of the blog…) read your blog? Has she seen the pics wich clearly show that you have not placed any mats around the sofa? Neither is she wearing a helmet or harness…. Count yourself lucky to be living in Spain where they are not that big on child protection issues… 😉
Love the pics , just a wee jealous that I can’t do any of the tricks. And Nora gorgeous as usual. You are doing a great job, by the looks of things but I can not wait till the day when she starts her own blog and shares her childhood experiences…
Take care, Euskalduna in London

Thank you. Yes, Marga reads this blog. The angle of the sofa cushions is enough so that Nora would have to do some considerable work to escape down to the floor. And there’s no way she could do it in less time that it would take me to get there from two meters away.

I don’t see any danger here (and I get that we’re joking), but seriously: it hits me now and again that my daughter is getting faster every day, and that I, at best, am not. She’s also getting smarter, and the opposite is plainly true for me. My sense of what she can and can’t do is, at the margins, always either provisional or out of date. Every day of her development is a tick in the countdown to my being completely useless to her.

I think I’ll try to defer that outcome by picking up some My Little Pony videos on the way home. Those things simply have to be developmental retardants.

Josh

Inés,
“Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
— Robert A. Heinlein

Ines

you obviously don’t know me… my children are the most independent chn ever , simply because i’m too lazy/busy to do it for them…. my children toys were the real kitchen utensils from very early on, just to give you an example….Thanks for the quote anyway. I only wish I was able to answer you back with a good quote too rather than this long blah blah blah. 😉 Sorry for the poor english but my favourite excuse…English is my fourth language and not back to mastering my 5th

Josh

Inés, I was clear about the sarcasm from the get go, but was looking for an opportunity to drop that new found quote. Te tocó. You might consider that laziness is the motivation for allowing your kids to explore the “real world”(tm) from a young age. However, in the long run, I’m convinced that there are benefits to allowing them to develop and explore from early on. However, having thinking, engaged kids is far from the easy path. Lazy parents enshroud their kids in a safe little fairy world of rounded edges, soft plastic, television, non-toxic toys and zero responsibility. Parents who do things the hard way want kids who ask tough questions, push things to the limit and play with knives. Good on you.
Is basque among your languages? That’s hardcore!

It’s one thing if you grow up in the Basque Country going to school in Basque. Learning it as an adult would really hardcore.

I’m off to go find some rusty nails, some mulch, and maybe a hatchet, for Nora to play with.

Ines

Yes euskera is my first , spanish my second, followed by french and english. Trying my harderst to get by in arabic at the moment as I’m married to an Arab. Funny enough the kids are only bilingual 🙁

Josh

Erik: No, actually, it isn’t “Euskera”, not in English, anyway. While I understand that language has always been a powerful political force, I’m tired of its presence in my life. If we’re communicating in English, the non-Spanish language(s) spoken in the Basque Country (that’s right, I didn’t say Euskadi) is Basque. In Spanish, the word is “vascuence” which, due to Fascist overtones, has been modernized as “vasco”. It wouldn’t occur to you to say, “I speak ruski yazik.” Or, “Do you speak deutch?” Why would you make an exception for Basque? As they say around there, “Buztana lastozcoa duena suaren bildur.” (Whatever the hell that means.)

A hatchet?!?! What, are you trying to raise your kid in the dark ages? Don’t you know that we have power tools now? Seriously, I’m not advocating a free for all, but am with Inés that real kitchen utensils require enough judgment for the kid to have to pay attention, but not enough risk to justify the so much less satisfying plastic ones. You know your child far better than the manufacturers (and the lawyers of the manufacturers) who put the “suggested age” labels on the phallic butterflies and “safe for children” toys. Trust your instinct and trust Nora.

Of course, that’s very much like something I’d do! In fact I almost did that. Getting a baby in the same position like that every day seems pretty tough. I salute those folks’ determination and resolve.